"This case is a prime example of the unpredictability of trials," said Susan Calvert Piel, the Abbott prosecutor and a former defense attorney. "And that's why people have to make decisions on both sides, the state and the defense, to cut losses and not take that risk."

'This is bad'

Joshua Abbott, a high school dropout and ex-gang member, was boyishly good-looking and capable of appearing deferential. Beyond that, court-appointed defense lawyer Neil Durrance had his work cut out for him.

"If you hear just the isolated facts," Mr. Durrance said, "your first response is, 'Ooh, this is bad.' "

The only wounds Mr. Abbott suffered during his 2005 encounter with Mr. Morrison were self-inflicted – he cut himself accidentally with his knife. What Mr. Abbott did after the killing didn't help his cause, either.

He phoned his father, who lived near Mr. Morrison, and said he'd killed someone. His father told him to call 911 and wait. But he refused, so the father alerted Denton police.

Meanwhile, Mr. Abbott showered, changed into some of Mr. Morrison's clean clothes and left. He didn't get far on foot before police caught him.

Officers found Mr. Morrison's body face-up on his bed, fully clothed and drenched in blood. The medical examiner counted 38 stabs and cuts in the autopsy and simply referred to three other clusters of "several" and "additional" wounds.

"David looked like a salt shaker," said his mother, Shirley Serna.

Under interrogation, Mr. Abbott explained to a detective how he ended up at Mr. Morrison's apartment.

Mr. Abbott said he and Mr. Morrison knew each other from performing court-ordered volunteer work at an AIDS clinic. On the day of the killing, they had agreed to get together at Mr. Morrison's place to discuss job possibilities at a Pancho's Mexican Buffet, where Mr. Morrison was a waiter.

The two talked, watched TV and drank beers. Then they went into the bedroom, where Mr. Morrison hugged and kissed Mr. Abbott on his lips, he told the detective. That "freaked me out," he said, because he hadn't known Mr. Morrison was gay.

Mr. Abbott said he told Mr. Morrison, "I'm not like that," and pushed him away. He said the man persisted, leading to a fight and the stabbings.

He did not allege that Mr. Morrison threatened to rape or kill him. That came later, at trial – as did the claim that Mr. Morrison had told him he was HIV-positive.

Prosecution theory

In court, the prosecutor, Ms. Piel, presented a theory for what precipitated the slaying: Mr. Abbott had panicked during a consensual sexual rendezvous and responded with rage.

She called a witness, an openly gay friend of Mr. Abbott's, who told jurors that Mr. Abbott had watched gay porn with him and expressed curiosity about sex with men. Mr. Abbott was wearing a pink studded belt with his name on it the night of the killing, and Ms. Piel said he couldn't possibly have mistaken Mr. Morrison, whom some friends called "Gay David," as straight.

None of the knickknacks or framed photos on dressers in the small bedroom was knocked down, which Ms. Piel said contradicted Mr. Abbott's statement that he had pushed Mr. Morrison into the furniture during their fight.

Furthermore, she said, Mr. Abbott's description of the scene didn't match where police found the body. Splatters on the back of Mr. Abbott's shirt suggested he was the aggressor, straddling Mr. Morrison and flinging blood over his head as he repeatedly stabbed the man.

"David Morrison was lying on a bed trying to defend himself as Joshua Abbott plunged that knife into him over and over and over again," Ms. Piel said in an interview.

Jurors said the prosecution's case seemed damning.

Then Mr. Abbott's lawyer put the dead man on trial.

Momentum shifts

Mr. Durrance produced two witnesses who testified that they had seen Mr. Morrison become aggressive when drinking. The prosecution was blindsided.

"Jurors will forgive a lot if they're told about it beforehand," said prominent Dallas jury consultant Lisa Blue, a former prosecutor. But if they're surprised, it is "the worst thing that can ever happen," she said.

An ex-roommate of Mr. Morrison's testified that he awoke one night on the sofa to find Mr. Morrison undressing him; he pushed him away. And a bar employee said he had to remove Mr. Morrison a couple of times after the man's advances with customers turned confrontational.

This bolstered Mr. Abbott's evolved self-defense argument: that a highly intoxicated Mr. Morrison held him by the throat and "told me he was going to kill me if I don't give it to him."

Mr. Abbott had a minor size advantage on Mr. Morrison, but his lawyer argued that the man had a "deadly weapon" – HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The victim's HIV status was never proved in court, but no one disputed it.

"If someone is attempting to have sex with you and they're HIV-positive," Mr. Durrance said in an interview, "it's pretty much a death sentence."

Mr. Durrance said his client didn't tell police the night of the killing that he feared for his life because he was still rattled. As they prepared for trial, the lawyer said, he helped Mr. Abbott crystallize the self-defense claim but did not improperly coach him.

During the trial, a controversial forensic pathologist, whom Mr. Durrance found on the Internet and hired, testified that the pattern of stab wounds matched Mr. Abbott's claim that he was pinned down and killed in self-defense.

"Every bit of the evidence supported that he was innocent," said Dr. John T. Cooper Jr., who reviewed the medical examiner's autopsy report and crime-scene photos.

Dr. Cooper told The News that the massive number of stab wounds indicated that Mr. Morrison wouldn't relent and the stab blows were "just hurting a little bit." The blood on the back of Mr. Abbott's shirt got there because he had to "roll out from under the guy" after finally subduing Mr. Morrison, Dr. Cooper said.

Ms. Piel, the prosecutor, called Dr. Cooper's opinion "outlandish."

"We likened it to that of a horror movie," she said, "where this person keeps getting stabbed in the chest and neck and face and keeps coming at Joshua Abbott over and over and over again without ever injuring Joshua Abbott at all."

Jury gets case

Yet jurors found the defense persuasive. A majority of them were women and related to fears of being raped, forewoman Victoria Ferguson said. They also sympathized with Mr. Abbott because some were mothers with sons about his age, she added.

"We're talking about a 19-year-old kid and a 40-year-old man who gets very ugly and violent when he's drunk," she said. "So David probably just scared the crap out of Josh."

Four of the women were nurses and favored Dr. Cooper's explanation of the crime scene more than the medical examiner's, which was a "cut and dried" description of Mr. Morrison's wounds, Ms. Ferguson said.

A few jurors, mostly men, were skeptical of Mr. Abbott and felt inclined to convict. Reggie Hernandez Jr. and Brad Parr suspected that Mr. Morrison made an unwanted pass, rather than attempted rape, and that Mr. Abbott didn't need to resort to violence.

However, Mr. Hernandez said, "The women, their first comments were, 'No means no.' They saw it as very black and white. Their opinion really wasn't going to change."

The men said prosecutors missed opportunities to help them make their points.

For example, Ms. Piel didn't aggressively cross-examine the defense's two surprise witnesses. She said she was afraid of stirring up more negative images of Mr. Morrison.

One longtime friend of Mr. Morrison's said she would have gladly testified as a character witness but wasn't asked. Cat Griffin sat in on the trial and was floored by the portrayal of Mr. Morrison.

Ms. Griffin recalled him as a fun-loving guy who played pool, loaned friends money when they needed it and spent holiday dinners with her family. He would flirt but never force himself on anyone, even when drinking, she said. He had two drunken-driving convictions, but no record of violence.

"Nobody I talked to can believe it, that he would act that way," she said. "Even if David did make a pass at him, that's no reason for murder. There'd be a lot of trials if every woman murdered every guy that made a pass at her."

The prosecution did try to raise doubt about Dr. Cooper, Mr. Abbott's medical expert. Ms. Piel told jurors about one controversial case in which the expert attracted national television attention in California about two weeks before the Abbott trial.

The murder defendant who hired Dr. Cooper had stabbed her husband repeatedly and was claiming self-defense. He testified that the man died of heart disease.

"Our theory on him is that he'll say whatever you pay him to say," Ms. Piel said.

The News found additional questions in Dr. Cooper's background that weren't introduced in the Abbott trial.

Dr. Cooper has been criticized by judges and peers, and he hasn't had a license to practice medicine since late 2003. That didn't prevent him from testifying as an expert, as long as he didn't perform an autopsy.

Mr. Abbott's lawyer said he was aware Dr. Cooper couldn't practice medicine and expected prosecutors to point that out.

"You don't leave any stone unturned," Mr. Durrance said.

Increasingly, Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Parr said, they felt worn down. They considered causing a mistrial but figured another jury would simply see it the same way their colleagues did.

"I think I finally did just say, OK, perhaps, give him the benefit of the doubt because everyone else's reaction – except for a couple of us initially – was that he was innocent," Mr. Parr said.

Mr. Morrison's family and friends were mortified by the acquittal.

"How in God's world can anybody get by with that?" his mother said.

Life after acquittal

About a month after he was released, Mr. Abbott was back at the Denton County court. He asked for the return of his knife and got it.

Then in fall 2006, he and an associate were arrested in Frisco for passing bad checks. Authorities revoked Mr. Abbott's burglary probation and sentenced him to three years in prison.

"I got out, did good for a minute and then [went] right back in jail," he said. The murder case "didn't teach me a thing."

Mr. Abbott said he spent much of his young life having run-ins with the law – from joining gangs to using cocaine and meth to assaulting a kid and getting locked up in a juvenile hall. The jury in the murder case knew none of that, because it couldn't be introduced unless he was found guilty.

Now, he said, he's ready to leave crime behind and doesn't want to be judged because he killed someone.

"Anybody can do it. Anybody," he said. "If you can kill an animal, you can take a human's life."

Is he remorseful?

"I'd do it again," he said. "Someone like that deserves what they get."

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